Why Google is Removing Apps from Google Play Store?

Google is removing those apps from Google Play store that are requesting access to sensitive user data but don’t have a valid privacy policies. Google will soon start to identify apps that don’t have a valid privacy policy and deny them listing on the Play Store.

Every app needs to have privacy policy in the Play Developer Console and ‘from within the Play distributed app itself’ that lists how the developer would handle the user data, apart from minimum security and privacy restrictions.

When you download and run an app on your phone, it takes one or more permissions to access your phone data, including but not limited to messages, contacts and photos. Google calls it ‘personal and sensitive‘ user data and developers need to follow certain guidelines for its transparent handling.

If an app doesn’t treat a user’s phone or contact book data as personal or sensitive user data, it violates the privacy policy.

Google’s this move would clear out all such apps and clean up the app store of any malicious app that might have been misusing user data, making the Android platform a little more secure.